Count to a Million
by Alidiabin
Summary: Tag to 17x02. In his Parisian apartment Tony gets a strange call from Gibbs. Fills in the blanks of Tony's side of the story. Mentions of T/Z.


The shrill noise of Tony's cell phone that woke Tony. He was not asleep but dozing on the couch, with a pile of laundry next to him. One of his grown ups only movies playing on his laptop. The warren like apartment in Paris, had thin walls so he knew better than to play the movies he liked on the television. More than once he had to soothe Tali's nightmares after a surprisingly violent kids movie. She had mostly grown out of the nightmares, but they had been at their worst during that first summer together. Tony's nights had been disturbed too. So when Tali padded across the room from her toddler bed to get into his huge bed, Tony was not sure who was comforted more.

Tony blinked a few times as the phone kept ringing. He checked the tiny time on his laptop, and looked out the window. It was dark. The deep darkness of night.

He picked up the phone, and frowned at the caller ID.

Gibbs.

Tony let out a sigh. He had not actually spoken to Gibbs for years. Of course, he had spoken of Gibbs', during the monthly fortnite sessions with Jimmy, and his semi-regular conversations with Tim. He was sure McGee passed on news of Tony and Tali too. Tim had mentioned showing everyone a photo of Tali in her ballet outfit, and the mud that ended up on it literally two minutes later. Like mother, like daughter, he wanted someone to say. He wanted to say that to his child's mother. He wanted to watch Ziva laugh, her curls bouncing, as they looked at their daughter.

Their daughter.

It still amazed him that they had made a daughter.

"Hi boss," Tony said as he swiped the phone to pick up the call.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Tony did not know what he expected. Gibbs was a functional mute on a good day.

Tony wondered if Gibbs' had dialled him by accident, but that would require Tony to be on his speed dial. It had been a long time, and knowing Gibbs ability to destroy phones, two cell phones since Tony had been on Gibbs' speed dial.

"Not your boss anymore," Gibbs said.

Tony felt a pang in his gut. He might have given up the badge, but his friends hadn't. He still knew too many people who ran into the fire. To many people who fought monsters.

For Tony the monsters only existed in the books he read Tali, and in his memories. The ones in his memories were the scariest.

It was May. Bad things always seemed to happen to them in May.

It was May, when he had watched Ziva's farmhouse burn on an international newscast. It was May, when he had suddenly been presented with a nearly two year old little girl who had never met him, but knew who he was.

He was still coming to terms with that. Still trying to let go of the anger he had toward Ziva for keeping that secret. The anger was not healthy, but it lingered.

He was still looking for answers.

"No," Tony said swallowing thickly. "What's happened?"

There had been so many calls over the last three years.

Ellie's frantic phone call, where she told Tony that Gibbs' and McGee had been kidnapped in Paraguay. It had been on that frantic phone call that Tony had found out that Delilah was pregnant. During those two months, he had struggled with being so far away. Not being able to help.

Then when Tim came home, and welcomed the twins, Tony felt the painful pang of jealousy. McGee got the happy ending. He got to be there from the beginning, watching his children grow from tiny newborns into active toddlers and beyond. Tim would never have to make up answers when people asked how old Tali was when she started walking or what she was like as a baby. Tim got to do this parenting gig with a co-pilot. Tony had to work hard to tame that jealousy. It was poison.

Then a year later, a frantic call from McGee saying that Abby had been shot, and was in a coma. Reeves had been killed, Tony did not know Reeves well, with their paths only crossing during what became Tony's last case. Nothing mattered, once he had Tali to go home too. Still, the loss of another life had stung. Still news of Reeves' death had hurt him. There had been too many good people sacrificed for the greater good.

Tony ran through the list of people who could have been hurt.

Please not McGee, he begged the universe. Those kids were too little, they needed him. Delilah needed him.

Not Ellie either. She was just coming into her own as an agent. She still had that youthful optimism that too many agents had lost. The optimism he had lost in his last years.

Not any of the others that had joined the NCIS family in the pumpkin walled squad room. Ellie and McGee had lost too many people.

Sometimes Tony wondered what Kate would have made of all of this. Tony a father in the most soap opera way possible. McGee with twins. Abby having finally let go of her lab, and living in London.

Sometimes what Kate would have made of her life. She had wanted marriage and kids. She probably would have made assistant director too. She was that sort of super human.

"Nothing," Gibbs said.

Tony let out a breath. Relief.

Even if he did not believe him. There was always something. Leroy Jethro Gibbs did not call to chat. If something really bad had happened, Gibbs would not have kept it to himself.

He looked across the apartment to Tali's bedroom. The door slightly ajar. Tali had mostly grown out of sneaking out of her bed to join Tony in his, but Tony wanted to know that she could come find him whenever she needed him. Her star shaped night light, something she was too big for, shone out.

He was Tali's everything.

All the child had left in this big scary world.

He knew Ziva was alive, but she wasn't here.

Tony knew enough to know that being here was what mattered.

Both of them had been the kids who looked for their fathers in the crowd, only to come up empty. Now, Tali did the same for her Ima.

Tony tried not to be too angry, when Tali asked for her Ima, but the rage ran red hot.

"I don't get too many late night calls anymore," Tony said, as she adjusted himself on the couch, knocking over a pile of clothes, he had set aside. Tali had gone through another growth spurt, busting out of the clothes he had bought for her.

The first order of business tomorrow was to go to the kids consignment store.

And, to buy some new socks, because despite how many packets of the socks he brought, they always seemed to need more.

"Guess not," Gibbs said. "How you doin'?"

Tony sighed, and ran his hand over his face.

How was he doing?

He was tired. Exhaustion ran through to his bones. He was much more exhausted than he ever was when he worked hundred hour weeks, solving cases and trying to make the world a better place, even among the shadows.

He was lonely. Senior visited every couple of months, and was the only other adult Tony spoke to during those early months with Tali. Tony had taken Tali to London a year ago, to see Abby, but the Abby of now, was a different Abby. She was working as a consultant for Scotland Yard, and running the Clayton Reeves community centre. Nearly dying had brought clarity to Abby.

_Why are you still there?_ Abby had asked as they sat in Abby's new flat. Tali asleep in the guest room, with her arm over Abby's dog. Tali had asked for a dog every waking hour of the day for months after that visit. Tony had almost given into her request, but a dog would not feel the void of an absent mother. _Even if Ziva is alive, which I'm not going to fight you on, it's been almost three years. She's probably not coming back. _

He had thought about it. He had asked Senior to look into schools and townhouses in Long Island or Jersey City. There was no way he could go back to DC, because there were too many memories. He would be looking for Ziva in every cafe, and every park, even more than he already did. At least if they were near New York, they'd be closer to Senior, and a train ride away from the rest of the family. Tali could grow up with people she could approximate as cousins. Christmases would be busy and loud. Tony was able to get a job. Ziva might have left him with a seemingly endless pot of Eli David's blood money, but he missed work. He missed talking to other adults.

The FBI had called him more than once offering him a job at an office of his choice. Vance had offered to put in a good word for Tony at Interpol, when Tony handed in his letter of resignation.

Yet, months after getting Senior to look into things, Tony was still here. Still in Paris. Still waiting for Ziva.

Once when he was a rookie cop, working in Peoria, he had found a lost kid. Tony had tried to get the kid to follow him, and get in the cop car, so he could take the kid home. The kid, a boy of about six or seven, had stood firm saying that his Dad had told him that if he ever got lost to stay exactly where he was, and his Dad would find him. Tony's colleagues had just summoned an ambulance to cut the kids Dad out of a smashed up car. Tony had been the one to tell the kid.

Tony had decided to stay exactly where he was. Ziva would find them.

He and Tali would stay exactly where they were waiting for Ziva.

"I'm okay," Tony said. It was a lie, but he wasn't going to spill his guts to Gibbs.

He looked longingly to Tali's door. He willed the child to wake, and disturb the call. He hoped for a tummy bug or a bad dream. Something small but significant. He knew he could technically lie, but even years after leaving the team it felt wrong to lie to Gibbs.

"How's Tali?" Gibbs asked.

Tony pulled himself up from the couch, and walked toward Tali's bedroom. He pressed on the door, so he could see her. She was sprawled out on the bed. Her wild curls covering the pillow. Her army of stuff toys surrounding her. The dress up clothes she would wear as normal clothes if she had the choice, in a pile on the floor.

"She's good," Tony said.

Good.

That was a lie.

So much for not lying to Gibbs.

Tali was as good as to be expected. Not that there was a manual for how to be a parent to a kid you did not know about, when the kids other parent had faked their death. There had been no check list to calm the tantrums that punctuated those long months between the ages two and three, where Tali screamed for her mother until her tiny voice was hoarse. There had been nothing that could soften the blow, when Tali admitted that she stopped making wishes on her birthday because she always wished for her mother, and she had not come home yet.

Tony had to think of everything as progress. Progress both of them were making. She had been a mess when she was placed in his arms. Not quite two, and hours after everything she had known had been ripped out from underneath her. He had been even more of a mess.

It had taken weeks for Tali to say Abba first, when she needed something. When she was sick or really upset, she still sometimes cried out for Ima.

It had taken months for Tony to make sense of Tali's Heb-lish. Tali had lost the Hebrew in the years that followed, despite Tony's best effort. He had sat through many animated kids shows with the white noise of a language he barely understand. Parenting was a dance on an ever moving floor. The Hebrew had been lost, and replaced with French that was spoken like she had been born under the Eiffel tower.

It had taken years for Tony to finally feel confident in this parenting gig. For so long he had expected someone to knock on his door and take Tali away. Anthony DiNozzo a parent, a single one at that, something had gone very wrong in the universe for that to happen.

"Good," Gibbs echoed.

Silence brewed between Tony and Gibbs. Not because they did not have anything to say, but because they had too much to say.

How could one undo three years of radio silence.

Tony wondered if Gibbs' was calling about Ziva's cabin. A shack in suburbia that the team had stumbled on when the Morgan Burke case came back up.

The team had discovered Ziva's journals. McGee had told him about that, and about the weird feeling he got as he read Ziva's words. There had been so much they had never known about Ziva. Too much to find out, now after she was gone. McGee always said gone rather than dead, a concession to Tony. Because, Tony still hoped, and hope was a dangerous currency.

Ellie had offered to ship the diaries to Tony, so that Tali could have a link to her mother, but Tony was not ready for that. He was not ready to read Ziva's words and inner thoughts, knowing he would end up with more questions than answers. He had asked Ellie to hold onto them for safe keeping. It would be the closest Ellie would come to meeting her.

Every day, he waited for her to knock on the door, and explain herself.

The longer she stayed away, the more far away it seemed.

He knew she lingered in the shadows. Sometimes she got so close.

He was sure he had seen her once. He had been taking Tali for ice cream, their weekly treat, because he had learnt that it was better to spend a handful of Euro's on expensive ice cream in the store, than to buy a big tub of it to keep in the freezer. He could bribe Tali with the trip,_ be good or no ice cream_. It was also better for his waistline, as he did not reach for the ice cream when he put Tali to bed, and was left alone with his thoughts. Tony lived for their weekly trip, Tali almost always chose the same combinations of flavours, where as he always chose a new flavour and let Tali try it. He hoped it would become one of those traditions they kept forever. That they would share secrets over perfectly round scoops of ice cream for years to come.

He had seen her dark hair first. He saw her dark curls in so many strangers. For so long he looked for her among gaggles of tourists. But, whenever he saw someone with dark curls, they were always too short or too tall to be Ziva. Too old or too young. Too thin or too fat.

But, on the walk in the summer sun, Tony carrying Tali's things like a pack mule, he had gotten a feeling. Tali had wanted to skip along, but Tony insisted on holding her hand. He had scanned the busy crowd, trying to hide his feelings. Tali deserved to keep the innocence of childhood. Mossad had assured Tony that Tali's existence had been hidden, but Tony was not sure how much he believed them.

Then as a group of loud Australian tourists thinned out, moaning that the McDonalds which was not where their smartphone GPS said it was, that he saw Ziva. She was thinner than before. Her dark hair loose. He caught her eyes. His heart jumped into his mouth. She shook her head. Then he saw her cheek, and her dark curls moving as she walked away fast enough to get away, but not too fast to cause a scene. In that moment, when he saw her face for the first time in five years, all the anger disappeared. He just wanted to take her into his arms. They could work through everything else.

He looked for her everywhere from then on, but she never got close enough.

His only solace, was that Tali was unaware. He would not have been able to take it, if she had witnessed her mother walk away from her. Again.

There had been a handwritten note in his mailbox a few days later. He recognised the handwriting immediately.

_Jean-Paul, _

_One day I hope I will be able to explain all of this to you. For now I must keep both of you safe. I am sorry for this. Please do not look for me. I love you both. More than anything. Count to a million. _

_Love,_

_Sophie._

That had been over a year ago.

There had not been anything since.

She had a lot of explaining to do.

And, he hoped that she would knock on his door to do that. Soon.

"Boss," Tony said, his voice soft. "It's late here, and Tali doesn't understand the concept of snooze."

Gibbs coughed, a sort of half laugh.

Whatever was unsaid was going to remain unsaid.

You couldn't put the toothpaste back in the tube, so Gibbs had kept the cap on.

"Night DiNozzo," Gibbs said quickly, as the phone line went dead.

Tony held the phone to his ear, and took some steadying breaths.

"Love you too," he murmured to the quiet apartment.

Where had that come from?

He opened the app he used to keep in touch with the others, and sent a text to McGee.

_Everything okay?_

McGee's reply came quickly. Too quickly.

_Fine, how are you?_

Tony's gut told him things were not fine, but he was too far away to do anything about it. He chose to leave, he told himself.

Tali stirred in her sleep. Her stuffed giraffe fell from its perch at the foot of the bed. Tony stepped into the room.

"Ima," she whispered sleepily, before wrapping her arms tighter around Kalev.

Kalev would always be her favourite toy. Once, when Tony had washed the toy, after he got caught in the crossfire of a stomach bug, Tali then aged about two and a half, had parked herself in front of the washing machine, and waited for him. She waved at him through the window of the washing machine, as the water ran over him.

Her Ima had given her Kalev, and Tali would never let him go.

Tony hovered in the doorway, leaning on the doorway, watching as Tali fell back into easy sleep.

"Come home, Ziva," he whispered. "We're waiting for you."

**A/N**: I don't own a thing.

This story started life on twitter, with a series of tweets talking about the last two episodes from Tony's point of view, and a request from donutsdebdibs. If you want a different point of view, make sure you take out misspatchesmom 'A Phone Call Out of The Blue'.

I wanted to write something happy, but here we are. I hope you enjoy it. It's weird writing about them in this place. Either way, I'm so excited that in the NCIS universe Ziva is in the present tense.

I am still making sense of those episodes. So much happened, and so quickly. So much is still unknown. The storyteller in me is fascinated about how the new writers are trying to undo, and make sense of. I'm curious to see what they are going to do.

I believe that Tony knows Ziva is alive, but I do not believe that the two of them have actually spoken. I believe Tony is very conflicted about his feelings, and I hope that came through. I want Tony to be angry at first, and Ziva to be scared but for the two of them to find their way back to each other, and for Tali to have both her parents. I also want the trauma of those years apart to be explored for all involved, including little Tali.

Thank you in advance for any reviews, or kind words.


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